Time Replay (4) The unbearable seven years in the county

There are always some very unbearable days in a person's life. Once they have passed, they don't want to look back or be mentioned again.

The seven years when I first came out of society and worked in my hometown county are seven years that I don’t want to recall again in my life

Seven years, compared to the long history, are like a fleeting moment; For my life, it is like a nightmare.

I made a mistake when choosing a career after graduation, which pushed me into the vortex of the restructuring of old state-owned enterprises.

In the 1990s, the restructuring of state-owned enterprises was not a big deal. In the wave of economic system reform across the country at that time, no one was immune.

I joined the company in the fall of 1992, and my boss only gave me half a year to familiarize myself with the business in the company’s operations department. Half a year later, I was transferred to the forefront of the sales department. Those years were the most difficult period for the reform of the grain industry, and most employees were directly faced with the problem of whether they could have enough to eat.

When I first arrived at the front line of the business, in the words of my leader, I was allowed to experience the most basic work in the industry, which also tested my ability to endure hardships.

While I was in the store, I often delivered goods to customers’ doors. Even when it was snowing heavily, I pulled a cart to the company canteen to deliver rice and noodles. There is a long downhill road next to the county stadium. After the cement road was covered with a layer of snow, the two tires of the scooter were slipping and it was going faster and faster under the inertia of the downhill. I knew that an accident would happen in that situation. The probability of an accident is very high, but I can't stop even if I want to. When I think back to this day, I still feel scared.

Perhaps because I can endure hardship, two years later I was transferred to another store in the company that had a serious backlog of ready-made goods (expired or near-expired) and was in charge of losses. For a moment, the entire company was focused on me, wanting to see how a young guy from the countryside managed to revitalize a dying store, or just want to see my jokes.

There has never been a shortage of lazy and envious people in society, especially in old state-owned enterprises.

It took me almost a year to revitalize the unsustainable store by bringing in new goods and making up for the losses in finished goods.

Also that year, my father was diagnosed with advanced esophageal cancer in the county hospital. After his father, who had always been upright and stubborn, learned about the test results, he refused to receive any treatment and went home directly. During the Spring Festival of that year, in order to seize the peak business season (around the end of the year) and fight a turnaround to turn losses into profits, I actually didn't go home. On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month after the Spring Festival, my father passed away. This is a guilt that I can't let go of in my life, and I can't help crying when I recall it. I owe my father the kindness of raising me and I will never have the chance to repay him in this life.

That year, I disappointed everyone in the company who stretched their necks to see my joke. I turned a profit the first year, and then continued for the second year. Just when I was planning to make a lot of money, I was arranged by the company leader to take over the most troublesome supermarket in the company. At that time, it was also the first self-selected supermarket in the county.

Later I heard that the first self-selected supermarket in the county was opened by the city's food system as a pilot model store for diversified operations. Each county piloted one store, and it attracted a lot of attention. He became very famous, but later suffered serious losses. To this end, the company's leadership held many meetings to study and selected several "capable people" to take charge. However, the results were either limited or unwilling to take over. It finally occurred to me to blame the mess on me.

Persimmons are always picked when they are soft. As a poor and remote person from a ravine, I was almost helpless in the county. It was only a matter of words for the leader to manipulate me in whatever way he wanted.

Next, in that self-selected supermarket, my bloody nightmare began.

In the early days of its operation, the self-selected supermarket was allocated by the city. It was not until it ran into operational difficulties that it was discovered that there was a large backlog of expired and near-expired food whose purchase price was higher than the retail price in the county market. The company leaders clearly gave me the best market and the best development opportunities, but secretly they dug the deepest pit for me. The company's finance department gave me all expired and near-expired goods as working capital based on the purchase price, but did not give me any more working capital.

In addition, I also arranged for several difficult-to-manage employees that other stores were afraid or unwilling to accept.

With such a mess, it is already difficult to convert those millet and rotten sesame seeds into working capital. In other words, the more you sell, the more you will lose. Even though that is an obvious fact, the store clerk still requires me to pay my salary on time every month.

I have neither a family nor a source of funds. I am obviously losing money continuously. Where can I get the money to pay my salary?

The company leaders remained silent at critical moments and turned a blind eye. It seemed that they had all agreed to see how I would suffocate to death in the hole they dug.

I never dreamed that just because I couldn't pay my wages on time, several clerks kept silent in the open, but secretly instructed my family to find some gangsters in the society to come to the store from time to time to cause trouble for me.

The county is small, but the evil wind is strong. It was also at that time that I learned that there were underworld gangs in the small county town, and there was more than one gang. From time to time, "Big Brother" would drive to the store with a bunch of gangsters to cause trouble for me. He even openly took the best and most expensive Hongtashan cigarettes from the counter, saying that he would pay for them another day, but in fact it was no different from robbing me.

At that time, the only thing that kept me from being completely depressed was that I already had my lover and daughter in my life. I gritted my teeth and endured all this, just to love my children and to run this family.

Later, several of my spouse’s cousins ??who were living in the city heard about our experience of being threatened by gangsters in the county town, and began to take their brothers on the “road” with them one after another. Come and help me. That kind of "gang" is actually the leader of this gang leading a group of people to communicate with the leader of that gang. Every time, I am the host and entertain him with wine, cigarettes and food. It was also at that time that I was always called "Brother Glasses" by some gangsters, as if I had joined their "gang". The gang occasionally went to my store to "set up shop" with machetes hidden under their jackets. Since then, from the county to the city, I have seen almost all the respectable people who "go around on the street."

If we had to put a clear mark on those past years, it would be the "bloody years of 1997 and 1998." For two years, I struggled to turn losses into profits in a fiercely competitive shopping mall, while dealing with various "Taoists" from various factions.

I even felt that those two years were spent in darkness and darkness. Therefore, I still don’t know whether it actually turned a profit in the end. In short, the "Taoist" comes here every now and then and treats them with good wine and cigarettes in the store. Almost all the restaurant owners around the store know me. I have never seen me eating alone. I am either entertaining this group of people or that other person. Help people. The days of spending money frequently and having to drink and burn my liver made my wife and I miserable.

At the end of 1998, my daughter turned two years old, and it was time to consider entering kindergarten at the beginning of the year. As if suddenly awakening, I discussed it with my lover and decided to bite the bullet and give up everything in the county and leave the land of right and wrong. I am really tired. I want to change my environment, to a clean living environment where my daughter can go to kindergarten with peace of mind and my lover can no longer be afraid.

After the Spring Festival of 1999, I carried a box of all my belongings that I thought were most worth bringing, and headed to Wuhan, the provincial capital. After I found a place to stay, I would pick up my wife and daughter.